All By Herself
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day seven - Before the series, Emma has a bad date..


_Three week Glee hiatus, the horrors! To try and make it go by faster, I decided to do this project. I'll put up one new ficlet every day (I hope...) up to the day Glee returns! So be on the lookout! :)_

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**"All by herself"  
[Emma (Will/Emma-esque)]**

Emma had resisted the idea for quite a while. She'd come up with excuses every time someone suggested it, so much so that she only had to hear the words "there's this guy I know," or any other words that amounted to it, before the wheels started to turn in her mind.

She didn't do blind dates… too many variables. There were other reasons, too. One reason… one man…

But this time, and she still couldn't believe it, she'd said yes.

It had all started the week before. Sandy Ryerson was out sick – he said – and Principal Figgins had brought in a substitute to look over glee club.

Marcus Finley. The moment he'd set foot in McKinley High, the halls were abuzz. The female half of the teacher and student population was eager, intrigued… Emma was curious as well, if only for the fact that everyone else was. Her eyes were still firmly on the curly Spanish teacher.

And then something happened, two things in fact. Erin Wick, the art teacher, came to Emma one afternoon, and offered to speak to Marcus about her. As she explained, she had Marcus had been friends when they were in school, at McKinley. Emma hesitated and her eyes wandered.

When she looked to the right, she saw Will, sitting within earshot. He appeared to be trying to hide it, but he'd heard everything. And without fully realizing what she was doing and why, she said yes.

Will had gotten up and walked away right after. He must have had class, yes? He couldn't have been… jealous? And yet, her heart leapt.

The joy was brief, soon to be replaced with concern. She didn't know Will's wife. For all Emma knew, she was a lovely woman and did not deserve another woman being thrilled at the thought of possibly drawing her husband's eyes away.

Marcus stopped by her office later that day. Seeing him up close, she could certainly see why all the women were going weak-kneed. He was tall, had piercing blue eyes, and his smile was a blindingly bright white. Two minutes later, they had a date for Saturday. As Marcus left, she half expected to see Will in the hall.

He wasn't. In fact, she didn't see too much of him for the rest of the week. He wasn't in the teacher's lounge at lunch, and in other hours he was equally not so present.

She wanted to seek him out… she missed him. But would it really send the right message?

By the time Saturday rolled around, it was as though she had not seen him in years. In the end, it would be the demise of her date with Marcus… part of it.

An important detail, which Erin had failed to reveal, was the feud-esque era of Finley vs. Schuester, back in their high school days. It didn't take long for her to find out.

They had just ordered, and the subject turned to school. Emma asked him how he liked running glee club. He flashed the pearly whites, and the possibility for anything less than disaster ended right there.

When Emma left the restaurant – ten minutes later and nine and a half minutes too late – she was frustrated and unsure what to do. She was out, she didn't want to go home yet.

She ended up back at McKinley. Something about being there, even if it was dark and echoing silence, the thing she was missing existed in this space.

She got to her office and went to sit down. For a while, she just sat there.

She tried not to think about him, she really did. It just seemed as though everything reminded her of him, without even trying. Sure, being at school, it was natural… But even elsewhere, he was in her head.

At the restaurant, with Marcus, she'd become the mighty defender of Will Schuester's honor. Marcus had carried his grudge for the one who had always been one step, one solo ahead of him… and he wasn't shy about sharing his feelings on the topic.

Emma had spent the next ten minutes trying to control herself, as though it also meant she remained stuck in her chair and at the mercy of more fodder to her canon.

The fuse was lit by a few seemingly innocent words with their only distinction being at the end of Emma's wits.

She wouldn't be surprised to be landed with a dry cleaning bill, if Marcus even dared to show his face at McKinley on Monday morning. After her own choice words, she could picture he would do his best to nurse Sandy Ryerson back to health and to work.

After a few minutes sitting, wallowing in her post-date funk, she noticed the light flashing on her phone. Expecting a message from a parent or a student, she sat back and pressed the button.

The voice drew her to attention, dragged her into a smile.

"Hey… Emma…" There was a pause, and she just went on staring at the phone. "I'm sorry, I know I haven't really… been around. I wasn't fair, I should have told you about Marcus. He and I don't have the best history. I hope you still had a good time. I… I'll see you at lunch, alright? Take care…" Another pause. "I miss you."

She smiled, as the message ended. He missed her… like she missed him…

And yet…

He was still married. That didn't change.

She left her office and headed back to her car. Capping off her evening, it was raining. She'd sleep it off, start the day fresh. She got into her car, turned the key in the ignition, the radio coming to life with just about the worst thing for her to hear in that instant.

"_Livin' alone / I think of all the friends I've known / When I dial the telephone / Nobody's home…"_

She tried to just buckle up her seatbelt and go home. But then she found it wasn't just droplets of rain on her face. As the music swelled, so did her emotions, finally breaking her down. Wailing and wallowing…

"_All by myself / Don't wanna be / All by myself…"_

She'd kept the message on her answering machine.

"_Anymore."_

THE END


End file.
